


selfish ambition is taking my vision

by hidefromeveryone



Series: Bandom One-Shots [4]
Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, Halsey (Musician), Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Accidental meeting, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Anxiety Disorder, Coffee Shops, Color Blindness, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Meetings, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Panic Attacks, Suicidal Thoughts, Thunderstorms, Writing music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 01:19:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8183380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hidefromeveryone/pseuds/hidefromeveryone
Summary: Whooshing air escaping the confines of a barista-inhabited wonderland announced the arrival of the gray-black-steel Tyler who had waged war on my already collapsing kingdom of varied interests and music riffs. A cup knocked against the pavement next to Chuck Taylor and his twin before a hushed exchange of apologies and acceptances were exchanged between a sorrowful unknown being and my stuttering speech. Setting off into the northern downpour of forgotten potential, I stayed curled up on the street until the two beings disappeared north on Martin Luther King Drive. 
aka another soulmate au nobody asked for





	

**Author's Note:**

> tw: depression, anxiety disorder, implied/referenced self harm, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts (vague), blood mention
> 
> okay so: back at the start of august, i made an au. it is referred to in my brain and by the wonderful @spiella as "the colors au" and it's essentially a giant headcanon of mine. it's a soulmate au where one member of the pairing can see the black/white/gray spectrum and the other member can see the colors spectrum. once they meet, if they touch each other on the skin, they can each gain one color/monochrome shade to add to their own spectrum. it is set in chicago and they are all in college. i have the entirety of the fic planned out and written. it has josh/tyler and pete/patrick and involves tons of fun stuff and heartbreak and everything inbetween. i'm not sure i'll ever post it here or not. i personally love it to bits, but it doesn't seem that good to me. if you want a summary of what happens, send me a message on tumblr or something. 
> 
> this here is what was originally going to be the first chapter. i have since changed the way this is wrote, as well as some details, but i thought some people might like to see it. this chapter was originally going to be titled "we're young and people change," which comes from "girls talk boys" by five seconds of summer.

Crinkling silver leaves dissolved under my body in an effort to delay the inevitable autumn morning I was rising into. With a heavy sigh and blurred vision, my feet seemed to slide along the slick dull floor of the third-story apartment as I attempted to leave the comfort of my bed. Flicking my eyes upwards, hazy charcoal sketches erupted around me as the sight of the open window flinging black, blacker droplets of water and ashen maple leaves into my space of being filled my vision. Three beats later, the window was slammed shut with perhaps just a few iotas of force more than necessary. 

“Josh…”

Whirling in the emerging whirlpool of the floor, socks soaked with the dark liquid, I felt the aggression seep out of my body at the sight of Pete. The look on his face was the _I-know-you-haven’t-changed-in-four-days-or-showered-or-left-this-room-except-for-food-and-to-use-the-bathroom_ expression that captured every feature of angled and imaginary being that made up the curves of Pete’s face, despite his attempt to appear unconcerned. 

“I’m fine, Pete.”

“You’re not.”

“I am.”

Silence full of empty promises and unspoken lies filled the atmosphere of the small room of the Midway Garden Apartments as his matching mocha-with-perhaps-just-a-bit-too-much-cream eyes met mine in an infinite gaze that both revealed and hid everything from my best friend. The irises of our dual organs were simply half-dried-cement-left-in-the-sun with my broken vision of white-gray-black. Before Pete knew not to inform me of the mysteries of the colors that made up the matter of every object born in and of the universe, he had told me the color of my eyes. 

Breaking our dual gaze, Pete absentmindedly ran his right hand riddled with forgotten phrases and whispered lines through his short midnight-sky black hair. Not meeting my half-hearted attempts to regain the lost contact, it wasn’t long before his rough voice brushed against the stale air. 

“I’m going to work. If you need anything, just text or call. You’re always welcome to come by, too. Oh, and I think you have an assignment due tonight.”

With that, Pete was gone like a breath of wind, almost as if the whole human interaction wasn’t real. I was left standing in my wet clothes from the onslaught of nature staring at the door of my room which was covered in posters of bands long forgotten and dreams of high school better left abandoned. Darting across the hallway with the speed of a cheetah, the door of the bathroom swung closed with a low squeal as the hinges protested against the privacy of my depravities. Deep charcoal liquid covered my senses as the roar of the ocean trapped inside the showerhead sought to cleanse my pores, running slightly darker down the steel-toed drain. Time meant nothing as the trapped minutes of measurement ran ever towards noon. 

\-----

Thunder shook the empty walls of the building as I tripped-slipped-tumbled down the narrow flights of stairs towards the dense lobby. Slipping my charcoal-gray hoodie over my stumbling-heavy-dying limbs, the storm swam into my throat clogging all five senses until I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t see as the clear pane swung outwards and the black, blacker water ran down my neck and through to my heart. Flipping my hood upwards towards the blacker-still sky and silver clouds while stepping out onto the sidewalk, I turned my gaze to the rocky pavement and slid south down Langley Avenue towards Greenline Coffee. 

Uneventful lives and screaming signs followed me down the blocks of 61st Street as the liquid streaming downwards from the gutters of the heavens lapped at my heels and seeped into my bones and knocked my temperature down, downwards into the frozen arctic where a polar bear decays in the depths of the ocean. Wrenching open the glass panes of the coffeehouse and unzipping the soaking cotton that weighed down on the fractured skeleton that outlines my physical being, I fell into contact with a body just slightly taller and maybe just slightly skinnier than my own. 

The force of the unplanned, unexpected, unwanted touch sent me reeling onto the dirty pavement where the heat of infinite stars exploding seared into my chest and neck. A coffee cup immediately followed, ramming into my face so it could leave a silver, snow-white explosion of paper scratches along my undefined cheeks. Before I could acknowledge the reflexes of my defects, my disjointed muscles had scrambled backwards much faster than the even faster beat of my heart as my breaths caught in my non-existent throat and my vision blurred and my hearing faded out until Chicago was a blur of everything and anything and nothing all at once. 

White-silver-chrome hair and murky lake-water eyes and ashen skin showcased their display less than a foot away from my face. In the background the deep grey-black-steel hair and demon-black eyes and reflective skin of another alien being canceled out the rest of the planet. Firm grips on the fragile wrists attached to scratched, bleeding forearms faintly recognizable as my own and a swirling white motorbike rumbling away down the street after a sweet moment of indecision placed themselves into my consciousness. My spine was curled inwards towards my chest, lower part touching the smooth, decaying wall of the coffeehouse, and my new shirt had a pencil-charcoal stain smelling of South America that would need to be bleached as white as my teeth. 

“They seem to be coming out of it.”

“Really?!”

“Yeah.”

“Thank god.”

“Maybe now you won’t hit passing pedestrians with steaming hot coffee, Tyler!”

“It wasn’t my fault, Patrick! They were right in the door as I was heading out!”

“I know, man. No worries.” 

“I’m going to go get another cup.”

“Get one for them, too.”

“Alright. It’s the least I can do.”

Reality uniting with fantasy, my head was still swimming through the depths of Lake Michigan as the gray-black-steel Tyler left and the white-silver-chrome Patrick focused his full attention with wary, warier eyes on my shaking hands and well-bitten lip which was being currently worn to shreds between my teeth. 

“Are you okay? You gave us quite a scare when you practically tumbled out into the road like Sonic the Hedgehog.”

“Oh shit, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened. I got in your way in the door, and now you two have to waste money buying more coffee. It’s all my fault. I’m so sorry, you probably have somewhere to be and-” 

“It’s no problem-just a plain and simple accident. And a couple of bucks isn’t going to break the bank. Just because Tyler and I are college students doesn't mean we’re absolutely broke. But, seriously, are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

Whooshing air escaping the confines of a barista-inhabited wonderland announced the arrival of the gray-black-steel Tyler who had waged war on my already collapsing kingdom of varied interests and music riffs. A cup knocked against the pavement next to Chuck Taylor and his twin before a hushed exchange of apologies and acceptances were exchanged between a sorrowful unknown being and my stuttering speech. Setting off into the northern downpour of forgotten potential, I stayed curled up on the street until the two beings disappeared north on Martin Luther King Drive. 

\-----

Black, blacker espresso rested on the precipice of death as its residence hovered close, closer to the edge of the table where Halsey stood filling the cup to the brim with the mire of death that breathed life throughout my veins as my life collapsed around me. Her hair was made of koalas which understood why the corners of my mouth never turned into a smile even though their heights reached the ceilings in the shop made of steam. Lipstick stains filled with romance, lust, desire stained her vocal cords in ways reserved for hushed affections and abandoned connections. 

“Ash?”

“What’s up, Dun?”

“What color is the ocean?”

“Blue.”

“Thanks. I’m so sorry to bother you.” 

“It’s no problem at all.”

Ruffled hair and the smell of summer romance stayed in her wake as I stumbled over the iambic cadences of the phrases and pages of deplorable lyrics in my phone. An assignment of writing a song needed completion although the idea of stringing words together was all too incomplete in the vocal interactions of my life alone. Calloused hands proved that my life was a maze of drums and a haze of beats in which I could pretend to excel at the one thing that made everything seem okay at least once a day. 

Sticking out the tongue of a thousand lies and singular hollow truths, I swallow the empty feelings of worth and type out with a steady rhythm the letters of a language created by dead people born centuries before. No one remembers them, and no one will ever remember me when the world is coming to an end thousands of years into the unforeseeable future made real by the belief of the hopeful. 

_They say the ocean’s blue, but it’s black right now_  
In the dark, on the sand, looking out at my crowd  
Depression and drowning singing now the full parts  
Of Lightning reveals where the ocean stops and the sky starts  
I’ve been told by the sky that the ocean I shall win  
But it’s hard for me to see where ocean stops, and where sky begins  
A random strike of light reminds me of what is true  
But right now the ocean is black, and blacker the sky is too. 

Finished, the song loosely entitled “Drown” dissolves into the air around me and floats throughout the particles of dust and skin as I collapse back into the lightning-shock-gray chair with a tilted-back neck and scrunched-tight eyes. Soaking clothes weigh me down to the bottom of my thoughts. They tend to worry Pete more than I’d like to believe. Especially now, when the darkness was big, bigger than before and ceasing to breathe seemed nice, nicer than ever. 

\-----

Heather-gray joggers and an off-white sweatshirt fall into the folds and rivers of my damp skin as the remnants of the cleansing liquid leech into the towel harshly rubbing at my features. The condensation clinging to the reflective glass of the fractured mirror morphs my vision of the towel full of holes and loose threads of formality clutched in my bleeding hand. Flicking my eyes upwards, the concept of time dissipates as my glance takes in the irises of my eyes. Shards of glass become imbedded irrevocably in my knees as I scramble onto the counter, only ceasing movement when my pupils come to rest mere centimeters from the reflection of my features. 

Mocha-with-perhaps-just-a-bit-too-much-cream floods the eyes that meet my disoriented gaze.

**Author's Note:**

> work title taken from "fall away" by twenty one pilots. 
> 
> find me on tumblr @hidefromeveryone


End file.
